Day 3920 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ephesians 4:24 NIV

What is there?

Of this new that I’ve been called to? Of the new that you’ve been called to too? What of new is there to witness within me and you? Do you or I have any proof of living new lives on what’s then the other side of lives left to die in what is then a past we’ve passed on from onto the new that’s defined only in a sort of difference in direction and devotion that it delights in the distance from the past to the present? Or does the present still look like the past? Will our past still be in the future? Does the present even care?

Can any of us even pretend we do when we see so little of all things new?

I awoke yesterday as I always do, with an almost frantic mind searching to find a word to share in response to a verse the same. And yet what hit my brain was this freight train carrying a cargo of confusion, collapse, catastrophe and an almost caustic reality in which I was asked what of God there is to see in me. For this seems the sort of thing that a child would think to ask of their parent. Because indeed, it does seem apparent that there would be something of the parent seen inside the child.

After all, the kid’s not there without them there and thus there must be something there of a resemblance in either sight or substance, sound or smile.

And, having now been at this walk a while I do agree that there should be evidence growing in an ease to see of this Father I seek to share via whatever ways I might help another to either see or hear of all He’s done in me to set me free from what was in fact a past that I’ve in many ways passed away from living anymore. I have died to a lot of what I once lived for, and that so much so that looking back feels something of a foreign film in which the actors are aliens and the language the same.

Indeed, I cannot quite wrap my mind around what was once so clearly wrapped up within my mind. For I’ve at times been a thief, a glutton, an addict, a liar, a lonely loser looking to love myself alone, an overweight man-child filled with so much emptiness that he sought only to seek always the same via friendships built on convenience and riches won in worthless pursuits. I’ve spoken words that I now detest the very taste of, much less what they sound like should they slip out. I’ve done things that bring only so much regret that I almost wish I could turn myself in.

And I’ve in fact done that a time or 2,000 through prayers I’ve prayed thinking repentance won within words alone.

It isn’t.

Rather repentance is a turning of the heart back into a bettered alignment with that which lies in a better direction, one almost chosen because it demands a different devotion rather than despite the fact. Which is itself something of a weird reality unto a people who so often and so clearly opt for only the path which asks that we do mostly still the same inside our common fear of change. A fear which has often overpowered our shame in staying the same.

Alas I fear that such a lack of movement has been embraced for so long by so many now that we’ve all taken it to mean that it’s mostly unnecessary to even attempt at any such growth as that which looks in the mirror and knows that it doesn’t know anything new looking back.

I’m terrified of that.

Because again, I know where I’ve been, and thus who too. Yes, I remember well what now seems in a lot of ways a much different way of life. And yet, waking up yesterday morning from the sleep started the prior night I seem to have found that I now only find not enough of anything new. For what does it say when even our memories still only testify against us?

Is not the past then still holding tight within this?

Something of a rusting anchor still held in place in a place we’re not as a person we might still be?

Can life change so much as it so clearly has and yet find us changing just enough to see there’s not been near enough change to amount to much of anything that’s in any way all things new?

How much new should we see if indeed He’s made all things such? Seems as though the ‘all things’ part points to there being much changed and it changed much. But is there enough change in our lives and the ways in which we live them that can show Him something of a reflection? Or are we still something of a blurred and burned out betrayal of His most bountiful blessing in offering unto all a freedom from their share of the fall?

I am indeed many days still tired and sore from the many ways in which I stumble and trip throughout them.

Leaving me to say then that I honestly don’t think there’s enough new to see in me. Not that there’s not any as I know there is, and a great deal at that. It’s just that we all seem to have this tendency toward the complacency of a plateau’s comfort. For we all know well the ups and downs life lived down here so often as if up there isn’t there at all. We all know what it’s like to trip and fall and find that we’d rather just stay down instead of getting up just to get tripped up again.

Yes, we’ve all experienced a fair share of the thin and flush in what’s been for us mostly a life flushed down the drain of thinking it a strain to seek for more than this plane of the plain.

And so whenever we come upon one of life’s many plateaus we seem to find this comfy kind of pillow upon which we can rest our wickedly weary heads from what’s by then long been yet another season through the ups and downs of a fallen life’s ins and outs. But the problem I’ve come to find is that our complacency and preference for comfort often allows us to seek ways, and helps us do so, to make those plateaus last longer than they likely should.

All because we know we can handle their flat-topped smoothness far easier than the grinding and grating of a life granted unto giving us a chance to share in He who came to save us from a life lived in service only to self and a society doing the same. And yes, what a selfish society we’ve so sadly become. For anymore each of us look mostly only unto ourselves seeking everything from the answers given in regard to why we’re here even unto the many excuses we craft for why we think it so reasonable to stay.

Indeed, to stay is the human way as we’re again anymore so adverse to change that we’re all but ready to throw hands at the very mention that we might benefit from such a thing.

Is this not even what we’ve done with God more than a time or two? Gotten all upset as He suggested that He died for more than our living only to continue how we were on the other side of that line drawn by a cross dragged across the sand of a time we didn’t live before? No, see that’s the problem for all of us now. It’s that we all live on this side of that time in which Christ came to find those who are His as will be, as promised, separated as if wheat from weeds.

Should He not then be able to see enough difference in us that He doesn’t need work so hard to sort our sort? Why then do we so often live as if He’s deserving of our doing nothing of His kind of thing new? I mean, He told us Himself that for such is why He came. Told us as much as He was in the very process of doing it in fact.

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19

“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” Isaiah 65:17

“He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” Revelation 21:5

What words?

Only those same that He literally left us with when He left this place to go and do as He’d also said He would and prepare a place for us to be, or at least those few of us who on that day are seen as His as having had their names written in His book of life and thus His life reflected within the way in which they’d come to live their own:

“It is finished.”

Or, as that section of Revelation 21, verses 6-8, goes on to say, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

A passage which indeed points perfectly at the promise of His having come and in fact completed His work of doing a new thing seeking to make all things new. And yet so too a passage which finishes by proving the problem because all of us can pick several of those things listed in verse 8 which have in fact defined the life we’ve been known to live.

Indeed, that indictment is found in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 which asks “do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?” and goes on to impel us to “not be deceived” for “neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” And that passage itself finishes with what ought to be a most hopeful of reality. “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

It’s just that there ought to be clear evidence to see of our having in fact been washed and sanctified, justified then in the Name that is above all others.

God sent Christ to see us through Him who came to lay down a life of sin in order to atone for the cost of all of sinful flesh as had been charged against our very own souls. And He expressly points out that such is the purpose when He speaks of the One Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. He exists to intercede for us through His blood poured out and the water which flowed with it given to wash us clean from lives lived far from such.

But what then does He see in us? In all truth He should see Himself, His Son, His Spirit. For we were all at first made in His image and then, having failed to uphold the honoring thereof, we were made clean by the washing away of our sins by He who came to complete such a work, a work sealed unto eternity by the Spirit Christ sent to lead us onward unto the day in which His good work began in us will be in every completed as we’re welcomed finally home into Heaven.

Does He see any of that in us?

Does He see a hope of that home so alive in us that we’re daily dying to die to what we’re finally coming to find was always only a world in which our home was not? Does He see a joy in getting to rid ourselves of all the deathly deeds we’d done before we’d heard of the Son? Does He recognize any of the Son inside of us, seen inside our share of His laying down a life that was lived by a sinful flesh, ours not His? Does He see a sense of urgency in us to find shelter in Him, a refuge sought only because we see finally the storm that’s coming and that we cannot withstand it alone?

Or does He see still instead a people living still in the death of sin? Does He see a people unmoved by His coming so close as to carry our costs upon Himself? Does He see a people who exist as if they don’t care that He might? Does He see still a people living as if it’s their might to wield their rights as if they know alone the right things to do despite having done so much that none should have ever done?

What of God is there to be seen in me?

And, terrifyingly, why does there suddenly seem so little now that such a question asked has inspired me to look? And, perhaps even worse, why do I often not seem to notice just how little there is and that that’s because of how little I tend to ask such questions of myself?

You see, I believe that as a Christian would it not seem that there should be more of Him there to be seen and thus to find as I go along within this life that is both mine to live but His to give. And yet, is not the little I now realize I see of Him in me only evidence that He’s given more to my life than I have to either His or mine? Should not the cross inspire such a loss of what once a way of life that was that all but everything I both always was and yet now what I want not to be?

Indeed, there should be something more of God seen in me, especially if truly I hope to see God. For why would He welcome any who settled for a life in which they saw clearly so little of God that they embraced others seeing little of Him in them? And while we are told that as those saved we are from there alive in Christ and He in us, does this not point out the problem should we continue to awake only to see so little of God in us?

Should not His presence bring with it evidence of our growing near?

Does not that which is closest to the light shine most bright?

What then of our current lives are shining a reflection of Christ? See, we’re told the fruit of the Spirit is clear to see in that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” And too, just before that over in Galatians 5, that so too “the acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

A list once again ending with that warning that our living in accord with such detestable practices will find us unfit to inherit the kingdom of God.

And so what then of said fruit is seen in you and me? Is there any from that list given of the fruit of the Spirit? And if so, are they growing as they should be should we be truly growing in Him who planted them? So too then, what of the fruit of flesh is still seen in us that shouldn’t be still borne if the flesh has truly been crucified alongside He who calls us to crosses carried?

We do know the point of that, don’t we?

It’s that crosses kill. What then is dead of who we’ve been? And is there enough of that old us that’s now been buried or burned away that it’s made the way for a growing evidence of His life-giving kind of fruit being seen being born in us who are claiming to be amongst those born again?

I don’t know but I do know that I woke up yesterday with this thought rather heavy on me: What of God is there to see in me and why are so many days lived in which there’s likely so little to see?

Friends, I’m not saying that we can achieve perfection in our walks with the Lord. And I contend that He’d agree as His Word reads that He’s up there to intercede for all the times He knows we’ll still manage to fall short. But I am saying that just because we can’t do something doesn’t mean we can’t try. Because what I think we’d find is that if we did convince ourselves to try some of those things that we’ve likely long thought too hard to ever accomplish, we might actually end up doing some amazing stuff.

Not because we can, but because He will if we would just let go and let Him lead the way.

He calls us to put on a new self that’s been created to be like Him in what’s then a continual growth in the righteousness and holiness and honesty and modesty and morality that He is. And so what of those things are seen in us?

If we’re truly followers of Christ the fruit will testify to that fact. And, that fruit will multiply as we go along following His Way seeking to find more and more joy in His will. And that’s because what He’s begun is just the very beginning of the beginning for those who’ve in Him the promise of eternal life still waiting up ahead. And so in Him, if we are in Him, we’ve then plenty of time to keep on growing and getting better at all this.

But friends, there should be evidence that we are. We may never be perfect here, but we should be getting closer all the time.

Question is are we? And the answer is found in living a new kind of life that, despite our tendency to struggle and fall short, continues to shine forth an evidence of His presence.

So again, what is there to see of God in us?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold